Emmerdale thought Bear Wolf would be gone forever, but on a foggy afternoon, the image of Bear quietly reappearing left everyone stunned. It was not a tearful return, nor a happy reunion hug.

People saw Bear appear like a ghost: haggard, with sunken eyes, his coat disheveled, walking like a person whose life force had been sucked out.

The way he looked at everything – wary, trembling – was enough for the villagers to know: Bear had not just “gone far away”.

He had been living in a long nightmare.

In a brief conversation with Paddy, Bear only vaguely revealed that he had left the village to “find work”. But his fragmented memories reveal a much more brutal truth: Bear was tricked into what he thought was a normal work place, but which turned out to be a prison. He was forced to work in exchange for accommodation, watched over, not allowed to leave the property, and even subjected to violence if he resisted. Bear didn’t say the rest, but his eyes – fearful, bitter – said it all.

When Paddy demanded to know what happened, Bear fell silent. That silence sent chills down the audience’s spines even more than his clear confession. Rumours have it that the “camp” was more than just a single one. It could have been a whole network of slave labour, targeting the elderly, the unsupported, or those with nowhere else to go. Bear was one victim, but there are likely many more held somewhere in the Dales.